Overwatch continues impressive run of collabs with NieR: Automata, and you can probably guess who 2B is

After an accidental early post on YouTube last week, Overwatch has now confirmed its newest collaboration coming soon is with NieR: Automata, and fans are in a frenzy for a few reasons.

NieR: Automata is a beloved game by all accounts (one of my sins is that I haven’t played it yet myself), sporting an 88 overall score on Metacritic, and the love for its characters specifically is paramount among the fandom. None are more iconic than 2B, the main character, and so she of course is represented in this collab.

Overwatch fans likely already know where I’m going next with this, but pretend to be shocked: 2B is coming to Overwatch as a skin for none other than… Kiriko. Yep, Blizzard’s Japanese darling is getting yet another awesome costume, to no one’s surprise, but to many’s chagrin.

The reaction to last night’s confirmation that Kiriko is 2B is standard fare for any time she gets another new skin these days. And I can see where players are coming from in their annoyance. Kiriko has a stunning amount of Legendary skins, and is frequently included in collaborations.

Kiriko has already gotten Legendary collab skins in the past with Terrible Tornado from One Punch Man, Himiko Toga from My Hero Academia, Blue Flame and Antifragile Kira-Kira from LE SSERAFIM, and most recently, Cinnamoroll from Hello Kitty & Friends. And that doesn’t even include a few dozen other original design Legendaries.

And you know what? It makes total sense. Kiriko is a popular hero to play, and games like Overwatch are going to give the best skins to the most popular characters, especially when they are attractive female heroes. Marvel Rivals does the same thing with Luna Snow and Psylocke. It just makes sense from a business standpoint, even if people are getting tired of her always getting cool outfits in lieu of many other heroes.

In addition to 2B Kiriko, by inspecting the concept art image, we can see that the full collab is (from left to right):

• Lifeweaver as Adam
• Vendetta as A2
• Wuyang as 9S
• Kiriko as 2B
• Mercy as Commander White

I will say, though, it’s a bit odd that a game about sexy androids does not have any collaborative skins with Overwatch’s characters that are also actual androids. But, I digress, because these skins will likely sell a ton regardless.

The Overwatch x Project YoRHa collab will come to the game next week. Will you be picking any up?

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Marathon is finally out. The game, which saw huge activity during its free-to-play server slam, replicated its previous success by opening to over 86,000 players, this time at a $40 price tag. Of course, this is being described as a “flop” by some, because we simply cannot have nice things in 2026.

Negative narratives around basically anything nowadays tend to form rather quickly, often propagated by people (and of course bots) who never actually experienced the thing they’re hating. It seems that nowadays, following the “Fall of Concord” back in 2024, games have to blow it out of the park every single time lest they be considered complete failures.

Highguard was a recent example, and even if that game doesn’t really scream quality at the top of its lungs, it certainly didn’t deserve the hate train coming its way, boarded almost exclusively by those without any hours clocked in the title.

And now Marathon is on the chopping block.

During its development, Marathon was marred by problems and hitches. It had several directors swapped out, had a few playtests that weren’t so well-received by those who participated in them, and so on. It crossed out every prerequisite for “development hell,” indicating the actual release would be a terrible experience for Bungie and perhaps the final nail in its coffin.

But that turned out not to be true, even during the server slam. It had over 130,000 concurrent players at that point and has over 86,000 now that the game costs $40 U.S. dollars. Nothing about Marathon tells us that it’s a flop or a failure or even underperforming for that matter.

And those are just the Steam numbers, which I imagine represent about half of its total player base, if not less.

The hate train keeps chugging along, however, no matter what.

While browsing X, I spotted one user arguing that, since Marathon is performing worse than Destiny and the recently released Slay the Spire 2 (which costs about 50 percent less than Marathon), it must be considered a “complete flop of a game” and, of course, as “Concord 3.0″ (the other one being Highguard).

“Marathon is dead on arrival,” another user wrote. Dexerto, a video game outlet, also compared Slay the Spire 2‘s performance to Marathon, saying the former “beats out” Bungie’s shooter, as if the two were ever comparable, both in price and genre.

The narrative is forming and slowly being propagated by so many people and even news outlets, who use superficial arguments to frame a game as a failure despite the fact that it had probably earned over three and a half million USD if we go by Steam’s concurrent numbers alone, which are in fact much larger, especially when consoles are taken into account.

And what’s worse, it’s people who either didn’t play the game or haven’t even seen what it has to offer. Those who did say it’s a good title, with it having 81 percent positive reviews on Steam at the time of writing, which improved as the launch day progressed, and are set to grow as time goes by.

Compare that to Highguard‘s 45 percent and its myriad of regions that have it at mostly negative or even worse. Highguard was also a free game that ended up flopping, whereas Marathon is already raking in a lot of cash that should see it sustained for the foreseeable future.

Online arguments and narratives have become so toxic and tiresome, to the point where I’m almost willing to give up on trying to reason with people and to pragmatically view every single game on a case-by-case basis. Why do we have to go out of our way to frame things negatively before they’re even out or without trying them for ourselves, at least for a little while?

I have every hope that Marathon will succeed and grow into a great game, because as I noted in one of my recent features, its art direction deserves all the praise it can get, as that’d prove to developers that giving a damn about looks (not just in terms of graphics) is crucial for a successful title.

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